The priest at the centre of the latest scandal to hit the Vatican used his
influence to secretly provide illegal financial services for wealthy friends
and colleagues, according to Italian investigators.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano in Salerno, ItalyPhoto: AP

By Josephine McKenna, Rome

4:06PM BST 22 Jul 2013

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano was arrested in Rome last month over his alleged involvement in a plot to smuggle £17 million from Switzerland on a private jet.

The 61-year-old prelate had accounts at the Vatican bank, officially known as the Institute of Religious Works (IOR), where he is alleged to have engaged in "totally private, illegal activity which was also aimed at serving outsiders".

In a judicial document obtained by Reuters, prosecutors claim the monsignor carried out "illegal activities by unscrupulously using his network of contacts in different areas, including businessmen, clergy who looked the other way, secret service agents and Vatican bank (IOR) personnel".

In early July a friend of the monsignor, Massimiliano Marciano, told an inquiry that the prelate once acted for one of Italy's wealthiest dynasties, the Agnelli family, and used the Vatican Bank to transfer funds on its behalf to Switzerland.

"Nunzio Scarano told me he had conducted repatriation operations in the past for the famous Agnelli family," he said in secret testimony. "He explained it was a system that used the so-called sealed diplomatic envelopes which enabled them to evade any kind of control."